Author Archives: Laurel

At A Loss for Words

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I usually know what is going on inside me. And if I don’t, the work of finding the right words helps me to understand.

Seems like lately whenever I sit down to write there are too many feelings, words tangled up inside pushing to get out in no particular order and much too raw-edged to share. So I end up staring at the screen and writing nothing. Not that I feel the need to show something better, to hide what’s going on inside behind a row of properly yellow ducks. Just this inability to sort through the jumble to find the words, right now, and waiting for something to change.

For me, writing has always been a way to process life– to attach words to emotions and perceptions gives them shape, orders them into patterns that reveal meaning, connects them to bigger concepts and ideas. But it is the processing that is getting stuck. And I don’t even know what I need; can’t put a finger on whether the difficulty is a matter of too much, or not enough, the wrong direction, or the wrong thing altogether…maybe we are all like that at times. Sleeping Beauty lying unaware in a tower for a hundred years, till the Prince comes to awaken her.

But You know my heart, Lord, and You know what I need. And when I am at a loss for words You promised to pray for me, Your Spirit helping me, Everlasting Arms to carry me. And in this again You stoop to my weakness, that You would groan without words for my own wordless needs. “Test me, LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind; for I have always been mindful of your unfailing love and have lived in reliance on your faithfulness.” (Psalm 26:2-3) You know my days and You know the change I am waiting for, even though I do not. And somehow I feel sure that when I awake, it will be to the sight of Your unfailing love.

 

 

“In death, In life, I’m confident and
covered by the power of Your great love
My debt is paid, there’s nothing that can
separate my heart from Your great love…”
(One Thing Remains, Jesus Culture)

 

 

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.” (Romans 8:26-27)

Still Running

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Sometimes you know going in that it will be a stretching experience. This ten-day challenge of camping in the hottest part of the Summer always is, and here I am again, scribbling lists and making piles, mentally prepping as if for a marathon. Because once we head out there is no more time to prepare and train, no stopping till the Finish Line.  Whatever comes, we’ll deal with it as we go with the resources that are at hand…and from experience I can say that anything can (and will) happen when you are living and working outdoors with people you don’t know well. The one underlying goal is to be Christ-like in the midst of every unfamiliar, uncomfortable, stressing circumstance; the one thing you can count on is finding Christ’s strength and help in the midst of it all… and sometimes even serendipitous blessing.

Thus the mixed emotions, because as difficult as the next two weeks will be, I can look forward to God making Himself known in ways that I could not see here in the familiar and routine. Marathons are like that: a catalyst for change, an exercise that pushes Who You Are into something stronger, maybe even a tool for transformation in the hands of Someone who knows what He is doing. And when you finish you get that unique mixture of satisfaction and relief for a difficult task completed.

So I take a deep breath and get ready to plunge ahead, to see what it is I have been training for, see what the race will call forth from me this year. Somewhat dreading. Definitely anxious. Maybe a little excited. Thankful that this annual challenge is neatly counted into days.

It’s possible my whole life might be a marathon race like this…one uniquely stretching and transforming event that is both difficult and amazing…except my viewpoint isn’t big enough to see the entirety and I was not aware enough to know it from the start. But I take it by faith that out ahead somewhere there is a Finish Line, and I do see God at work in the good and the bad, showing Himself in new ways as we go. I trust that Someday I will see with an eternal perspective that makes everything clear…that some Morning I’ll wake up with the overwhelming relief and satisfaction of a marathon well-completed. In the meantime, I am still running.

 

 

“…I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” (Philippians 3:13-14)

 

 

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.” (The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Counting Reasons

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I’m listening to her talk as we all work out this morning, these good women from various church backgrounds, except that I happen to know her faith is a personal one. “I told God that whatever He decides is fine with me,” she says quietly. “I know He will do what’s best.” The others shake their heads in sympathy; I slant a smile for her courage, small offering to a wife nursing a second husband through cancer. She looks tired today, but she is here to exercise. The feet keep moving and voices intermingle with the upbeat music, and she is speaking her list of thanksgiving: an air conditioner in the apartment, a good breakfast, a daughter coming to visit for the holiday…

It seems hard to me that God would ask her to go through this loss again– hasn’t she suffered enough? Learned enough? The others are still talking, her praises still threading through, and when she says she will stay and take care of him herself, whatever it takes, I think maybe this isn’t about her learning  or growing anything.  Maybe it’s about her giving what she has already learned– blessing two men with her faithful love and willing service, sharing her faith and courage with these watching friends. And she is still offering up her reasons to praise God, all her reasons to hope and keep on going because He is with her: some days are almost pain-free, a new pill to help with nausea, God hears our prayers…

My heart can’t help but add to her list of reasons, because if she can praise where she is, how can the rest of us not? …strawberry sundaes, a night of rest, pink and purple flowers spilling out of a big pot, fireworks, coffee in the morning air, school loans paid off, meaningful work to do… This remembering is like breathing for our souls– drawing in acknowledgement of the Giver and pouring out thanksgiving– a litany of everyday praise that battles against depression and worry and fear. This choice to give thanks is a kind of spiritual discipline, the exercise that moves our hearts close to the Father in childlike trust, our minds to bow before the Creator. It is grace you can learn to see in the desert places: the sun and rain that fall on everyone, and daily bread. “The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning; It’s time to sing Your song again. Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me, Let me be singing when the evening comes….” (Matt Redman)

When I stop to stretch, change clothes and head out for the day, she waves goodbye from out on the floor, and I think how she shines without even knowing it, and how praise transfigures the most difficult things. And how we could spend our whole lives and not run out of reasons to give thanks.

 

 

 

“Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits…. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed– he remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:2, 10-14)

 

“You’re rich in love, and You’re slow to anger,
Your name is great, and Your heart is kind;
For all Your goodness I will keep on singing,
Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find.

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
O my soul;
Worship His holy name.
Sing like never before,
O my soul;
I’ll worship Your holy name”
(10,000 Reasons, Matt Redman)

Of Plows and Crosses

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An antique plow is still sitting in the hallway of our church. When I saw it for the first time in the dim silence of an empty building, it seemed like something unexpectedly sacred. Something profound and pointed. There is beauty in the utilitarian curves, the worn grey wood, the aged metal touched with rust, the simple command framed in black above it: “Burn them.”

That plow is a tangible illustration of one man’s whole-hearted response when God came calling. A challenge to leave our lives behind and follow wherever He leads. A reminder that obedience often looks counter-intuitive, maybe down-right crazy, to the world at large. There’s no escaping that. But maybe someone* who is busy burning a plow, his heart focused on what God is saying, has no time for looking around and wondering what people think.

I used to wonder at the prophets, how when they heard the Word of the Lord it changed them, sent them wandering and somewhat wild, prone to unpopular declarations and inconvenient tasks…used to wonder how the thousands of years worked to tame the Word of the Lord till it fit into soft-colored pews and Sunday morning schedules before lunch. It took me awhile to realize that ears-listening to the Word of the Lord isn’t always the same as heart-listening to the Word of the Lord, and that when a person really hears what God is saying his life will go against the grain in all kinds of wildly wonderful ways.

I am reading about Katie and her thirteen children in Uganda, a beautiful mom barely more than a teen herself, and reading about newlyweds crossing the world to bring God’s love to people who don’t even want it, and reading sister-heart Ann saying “Compassion…is a feeling so strong that it causes you to bend: it shapes your body, your life, into a response. Compassion is the radical cross-shaping of a life.” (VosKamp) I see the plow every time I walk into the building and wonder what God is calling us to as a Body, as individuals. Vance Havner said something along the lines of “You live what you believe; the rest is only talk.” That’s what makes the plow so powerful– because what you are willing to do for God shows what you really believe, and the evidence is both in what you are running toward, and in what you are leaving behind.
(*You can read the story of Elisha and his plow in 1 Kings 19:15-21.)

 

 

 

“…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)

 

 

“We may never be martyrs but we can die to self, to sin, to the world, to our plans and ambitions. That is the significance of baptism; we died with Christ and rose to new life.” (Vance Havner)

 

 

From the Mouths of Babes

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Lately God keeps talking to me about faith– not how to live it out in words and actions, but how to live it on the inside, because learning to step out and do the right thing is good, but learning to “Be still and know that [He] is God” (Psalm 46:10) is important too. The word the Singer used for being still is rapha, meaning to surrender… allow yourself to let go. His song has more to do with remembering Who is in control than with ceasing of noise and energy– the surrendering is linked to the knowing.

Surrender is kind of a scary concept, and I’m all for it, but I think I’d prefer it to stay within reasonable limits. It’s like my faith ping-pongs somewhere between the innocent trust of a child who says “I don’t think Jesus wants it to rain on us” and the world-toughened rationalism of an adult who is a little hesitant to trust God for anything too big for fear He might not come through for us when we pray, and how do we explain that, or reconcile that with our faith? Looking around, I think I am not the only one, either. Most of us have this fragile balancing act going on between fear and faith, and often it is only the prevailing circumstances that make the difference.

Sometimes God does the big miracles and we laugh amazed with outstretched arms like children, and sometimes it rains and we mop up the chaos and try to hang onto faith in spite of the mess…so that after awhile some of us actually become pretty fair spiritual jugglers, resigned to handling faith and disappointment-with-God as natural parts of the same show. And even though we admire the childlike faith that can expect great things and live unafraid, we have the uneasy feeling that it is only for a special few– and maybe as long as the fear is kept busy and distracted with faith flying around, it will be okay, because we are after all, only human.

But Amy Carmichael’s words keep pulling at me: “…we trust all that the love of God does; all He gives, and all He does not give; all He says, and all He does not say.” Innocent faith of a child receiving whatever comes from the Father’s hands, whether good or bad– and there’s the catch, because if it flows out of His love and He says He is working all things out for my growth and good, then how do I even know where to hang those labels of good and bad? In the words of that brave missionary to India, “The more we understand His love, the more we trust.” Maybe our crisis is not one of faith so much as one of understanding, of accepting love.

I’m starting to accept the notion that I really don’t understand what is best in any situation. Spending the night in a big city airport because we missed our connecting flight? Sleeping in the food court with the homeless people taking shelter from the same storm that messed up our flight schedule? Missing the seminar that we had come for and already paid for? Bad, really bad. Except that the night passed and we were calm; we did sleep a bit, propped up on our luggage, discovered a resilience we did not know we had. And a new heart-awareness of the people who sleep in airports because they want to, who are sturdy survivors and well-prepared for storms because they expect difficulty. Not to mention a reminder that needs are not the same thing as comfort and preference. Maybe good after all?

So then the next time it rains and chaos ensues, with over-turned schedules and masses of people awaiting split-second decisions that should be nothing but bad and stressful, there is this supernatural Stillness in the center of the whirlwind, and I realize that I don’t even know if this is going to be good or bad, I just know His heart. He loves us and He is good, and whatever happens He will help us with it. Like a child who trusts the One who loves him. Oddly finding nothing to juggle any more because He is holding it all. Allowing ourselves to let go, become weak, so that we can recognize the Master of the Universe in His rightful place on the throne.

And the next day the four-year-old says, “Maybe it will rain today and maybe it won’t. Who knows?” Maybe childlike faith expects great things and lives unafraid only because it knows storms will come, and we will stand strong and survive because Someone bigger than the storm loves us. Maybe the rational adult can just choose to lay down his juggling act, admit that it is only a mask for fear and the desire to control, “be still and know [He] is God.”

Not sure yet what surrender fully means, how to live out faith on the inside and on the outside in all circumstances, but I think it may be the lesson we are all learning, in every one of our days from start to finish.  Help me Lord, on this day, to sing with the children in their simple trust: “What are you worried about now– Trying to figure it out now? God knows right where you are now– You know it’s all in His hands now. Give all your worries and your cares to God, For He cares about you…”

 

 

 

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.” (Psalm 46:1-3)

 

 

“…I need You to open my eyes,
To see that You’re shaping my life.
All I am, I surrender.
Give me faith to trust what You say:
That You’re good, and Your love is great.”

(Give Me Faith, Elevation Worship)

 

 

Known

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Sometimes God’s miracles are as quiet as kind words and willing hearts. No show or noise, or mighty rushing power. Just the gentle whisper that says He hears me and will provide. Not abundance maybe, but enough for the day. It is enough. Like an old friend used to say, “Some days the miracle is to walk and not faint.”
“…but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

Find You

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You’d think I would have learned by now that pushing things under doesn’t erase them, just makes it easier to keep going for the time being. But that undercurrent has a way of finding an outlet somehow, pressure building till it has enough force to break through any crack into broad daylight, break any heart with the weight of it all. Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall, and it may just have been the least little breath that eventually pushed him over into all those pieces.

And when the heart cracks wide open, it’s easy enough to look back and see the griefs pushed under, the problems with no solutions, the unexpected that pours in like rain, late nights and daily nuisances, and not near enough laughter. Easy too to name the things you have used to mute the sound of your soul, the outlets (most of them good) for that energy… did I really think it would all dissipate with time? Think I could carry all this brokenness around inside myself without running headlong to the Burden-Bearer, the Healer of my soul? At the time it felt like survival, but looking back it seems more like blind Self-sufficiency, a base-line assumption that I have to keep going and carrying it all because there isn’t any alternative. Or maybe just a giving up– resignation that this is all there is so you may as well get used to it. Really?  I do know better than this, and I sorrow again at how easy it is to lose sight of what is True.

It’s part of the fog of this world, the blindness that we breathe in, look through, hear every day…the spiritual grime that blankets creation like the worst kind of pollution. I need to be reminded often and strongly that Jesus is at work here, re-creating everything, making beautiful things out of all this dust. That He really is growing us to look like Himself… wiping our eyes clear of the muck so we can see Light and opening up ears to hear His quiet whispers… changing willful hearts to obey, strengthening weak bodies to serve. I need to take time to tell Him everything and to listen to what He tells me, because it takes time for Truth to sink down deep and do its healing work.

Help me see You. Help me find You with all these pieces.

 

 

 

“All this earth–
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come up from this
Ground at all?

All around,
Hope is springing up from this old ground;
Out of chaos life is being 
Found in You.
You make beautiful things…”
(Beautiful Things, Gungor)

 

 

Find Me

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On a day when I feel lost, playing hide-and-seek with Truth and wondering who I am, the words to the simple song we sang on Sunday come to mind: “Oh the gravity of You, brings my soul unto its knees; I will never be the same– I am lost and found in You…” (Alabaster, Rend Collective Experiment). That’s what I need, to be grounded in Someone infinitely strong and certain; I feel it more some days than others, because circumstances can take you off course without a moment’s notice and emotions can blow and batter worse than a storm. Gravity is what I need exactly, in every sense of the word, to keep my heart in one piece.  The giant almighty Center holding everything in its place. The awesome silent solemnity of being in God’s presence. Let me lose my Self in You… find who I am in You.

I love Francis Thompson’s classic poem The Hound of Heaven, the way he pictures God chasing him relentlessly through all the days of his life, Love never giving up until his soul gave up running and was Home and safe. A much-needed message came to my inbox yesterday, a sister-writer reminding me that God does not only run after the fleeing, but He also runs after the floundering. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me”— chasing me, pursuing me, hunting me– “all the days of my life,” because I belong to the Good Shepherd.

So on days like this, when I can’t see anything clearly, if all I have is the faintest whisper… “find me”…that is enough of a prayer, because the One who leads me on, who is the Beginning and the End of all things, will never stop hunting me down with His goodness. Pursue me with mercy…find me…draw me to Yourself and set my feet on solid ground.

 

 

“When I said, ‘My foot is slipping,’ your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.
 When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy.” (Psalm 94:18-19)

 

“All which I took from thee, I did’st but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in my arms.
All which thy child’s mistake fancies as lost,
I have stored for thee at Home.” (The Hound of Heaven, Francis Thompson)

All My Needs

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“And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:19) It was the favorite verse of every impoverished college student, and we repeated it to one another encouragingly as we worked our campus jobs, and prayed over bills, and looked for lists of secondhand textbooks on the board in the Campus Center, checked our post office boxes for letters from home in hopes of a check. Lessons in faith well-learned in those years and often leaned upon. But somehow financial needs are the most straightforward place to trust and I have been struggling ever since to know where else to pin it.

Is that verse for grandparents who are raising a grandchild and finding it takes more energy than they have to give? Will God supply for the parents who are moving a college grad back home because he can’t find a job, knowing full well that student loans are looming? Does that verse belong to the ministry leader who keeps pleading for more workers, and often grows weary? Does God’s promise of provision cover the heart-sore mother on another holiday, who just wishes her family could be together? So many needs, and they color our lives with desperation for a solution, because they make us feel helpless and afraid. We need a Provider, and doesn’t this well-known verse say that God will supply all our needs…?

It strikes me, all these years later, that maybe it wasn’t really meant to be applied to many other things. Just before the missionary Paul made this sweeping claim for the Philippian church who had given generously to him in spite of their own hardship, he confided to them that he had learned the secret of contentment through trial and error….in all the pressing and shifting circumstances of his journeys, he had found this one thing to be constant: the God who had called him was with him always and gave him strength to meet every situation. In joyful abundance… it was Christ who enabled Paul to live well in the midst of it. And in hunger and need… it was Christ who enabled Paul to live well in the midst of it. It was a secret, a treasure he had found hidden in life’s ups and downs, the kind you only find by living through them. Clearly then, his statement to the Philippian church was no promise that God would supply everything lacking in their lives, nor was it a promise that they would never go without in the future.

Indeed, because the secret of contentment is a treasure worth sharing with his readers, Paul implies that both abundance and need are only a means to an end. To his way of thinking it is good for our souls to experience both (and probably repeatedly, given how slow we are to learn) so that we may find the treasure of knowing Jesus Christ. Clearly going without was not something Paul feared, not something he would be quick to promise away for his readers. And yet a few paragraphs later he says God will supply all their needs, and it makes me think that maybe his idea of need is something different than mine. And maybe it’s just that their generosity is something God notices and rewards.

We believe that Christ’s riches are big enough to cover, and we would like God to supply all our needs as concretely as money in a bag, but I think Paul’s real point is about that deeper issue: the secret of knowing God and living in His presence, whether you have the tangible things you need or not. Because the truth is, the assurance of His presence and being content there is what I need most of all. As I look for verses about God’s provision this week I see Him promising forgiveness, mercy, peace, justice, Presence, strength to do what is in front of me….these are the intangibles He thinks I need in life. The other stuff is just the extra details, the context. Like Jesus said, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)

It is culture shock, this head-long collision between normal human perspective and the spiritual reality, like trying to get my brain around a foreign concept. Show me what I really need, Lord, in each situation, and help me focus there, rather than on the needs most obvious. Help me discover the secret of being “content in whatever circumstances I am.”

It would be frightening to depend on a God who cared more about my spiritual growth than my situation, except that I know His heart. I know He cares about me as a person. Verse after verse piles up overwhelmingly in my favor. He loves me and He is good. I can trust Him in this.

 

 

“He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)

 

“It is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself.” (These Strange Ashes, Elizabeth Elliot)

When You Are Tired of Doing The Right Thing

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The heartbreaking thing is that even when you know what is right to do and apply yourself to it with God’s strength, it may not change your situation for the better. Obedience is not a magic key that unlocks doors, and right choices do not always smooth the paths you walk. The results are more often in my own heart, but that’s hard to take when I know the struggle it took to get this far, and if such heart-upheaval can’t produce tangible effects in the world then why am I even trying?

We have this sense that right choices, right words, right actions should work out righteousness in the world around us. We’re not too far wrong– that knowledge was built into us from the Beginning: a foundation laid into  this creation of action and reaction, cause and effect, and God the First Cause: “By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.” (Hebrews 11:3) God created worlds with His divine will, divine words– His perfection and beauty reflected in tangible form in a way never before seen. And man was made steward of what God spoke into being, given authority over creation to act and choose good for all He had made. I wonder if Adam understood just how big that choice was; he could not have known how the world would groan and labor under the working out of his actions, turning everything “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Man’s relationship to God was reflected in tangible form in creation’s response to him, for good or for ill.

Maybe that’s the mercy of choices now, that our power is so much limited, reigning in our ability to destroy. The desire and the knowledge may linger, but the only real power we are left with is to change our own hearts. And maybe that’s where it matters most, because that is where the battle for power is being fought. When the Beloved One chose good for us, because we could not for ourselves, He was again acting as First Cause, wrestling with Darkness on our behalf to work out righteousness in the world. His choices, His words, His actions making all things new, to regain His rightful rule one heart at a time.

And He says to us now that it does matter what we do, how we respond to His re-creation, and wrestling to make the right choices does change the world, even if the evidence is unseen and only He knows. Because if He rules in us, His righteousness will be worked out there, and His beauty and power will be demonstrated in our lives, small seeds that will grow to fill the earth. Jesus told us that His kingdom would begin in the small silent places: “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed…because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Luke 17:20-21)

We get frustrated because we can’t change hunger and poverty, stop violence, heal marriages, rescue children, build a society that lasts… but God goes right to the heart of the matter and transforms the world from the inside out, starting where it matters most– in the dead hidden places of the heart that need to be made alive. So that our choices, words, actions can be for good again, reflect His nature and His righteousness. Because He is building a kingdom that will last forever, and we are the living stones. Be patient and keep on doing the right thing, because only the Builder knows exactly what He is building. “…let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.” (Galatians 6:9) 

 

“I need You to soften my heart
To break me apart;
I need You to pierce through the dark,
And cleanse every part of me.

I may be weak,
But Your Spirit’s strong in me.
My flesh may fail,
But my God,You never will.” (Give Me Faith, Elevation Worship)

 

“You are the light of the world…let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14, 16)